Shredding Stress

     I was feeling stressed about something the other day. It was the proverbial straw that was threatening to do unspeakable things to my poor camel's back. Stress has a way of making ordinary tasks feel overwhelming. Suddenly my laundry pile was screaming at me, and my calendar felt like a bag of bricks. I was beginning to unravel, so while neither of my responses to the laundry or calendar were rooted in reality, I did the only reasonable thing a girl could do at such a moment—I went to the basement to shred old tax documents.

     After half an hour of intense shredding, my equilibrium was restored. By the time the bags of scrap are carted away by the Recycler, there will be plenty of space in my soul to breathe, mop the floors and roast tomatoes for soup.

     We all deal with stress in different ways. Mine is to marshall the outside in order to manage the chaos within by tidying the kitchen, stripping my wardrobe of cram, or cleaning the crawl space in the basement of un-needed detritus. 

     So, whether it is a tornado warning, a disagreement, an unexpected hospital visit, or an aggravating news segment, you will probably find me in the basement shredding old tax documents...and praying, because there is no better way to manage stress than to put the matter into hands that can handle it.

Kissing Frogs

     It was 1:00 AM and I wanted to finish my book before turning out the light, so I began skimming. That's never a good sign. After fifty pages, I decided the book wasn't worth the loss of sleep. In the morning I decided it wasn't worth the loss of time to finish the last seventy pages and dropped it into the library return pile. I felt cheated. I had neglected housework to read that book, but at least I hadn't gone out on a limb and bought it. I have made that mistake before, bet money on a book I haven't read, and it makes the keen edge of disappointment even more acute when the book turns out to be a bust. Two years ago I bought a popular historical romance with so much bust in it, I dropped it in the trash bin after reading only a quarter of it. There is a difference between trollop and Trollope--it's called codswallop.

     I have spent most of my adult life reading the classics, but, these days, I have been reading and buying more modern literature. By modern I mean books written in the last fifty years--the potential classics of the next century. The upside is that I have discovered some delightful new authors to populate my bookshelf and wax rhapsodic over when someone asks me to recommend a good book. The downside is the trash bin. And that feeling you get when a used car salesman gets the best of you.

     I realize that my personal taste in literature is not by any means the barometer of accepted opinion, after all, I didn't enjoy War and Peace or The Great Gatsby. Who will want to read my blog after an admission like that? But I know what I like and what makes a book worthwhile to me.

     And I also know that a girl's got to kiss a lot of frogs before she finds a prince.

The Passenger's Photo Album - Oaxaca, Mexico

Widest tree in the world.

I see a lion emerging from its bole. What do you see?

At the Glance of the Sun

   

     We were in the sitting room enjoying a cup of afternoon tea and a plate of scones when my husband suddenly rushed out of the room and returned with his camera. He spent the next few minutes snapping dozens of photos. It wasn't the dining room table or chairs he was photographing, nor was it the metal bowl full of paper snowballs; it was the late afternoon sunlight pouring in through the slats of the sitting room blinds that had caught his eye.

     There is more than one reason why I married that man.

Not Just a Wooden Spoon

     You may have noticed my bouquet of wooden spoons on the kitchen counter in a recent post. We were talking appliances at the time, and my spoons were content to bide awhile till I was in the mood to feature them in their own post. I keep them out on the counter because they remind me of the color of toasted pine nuts...too pleasing to stuff in a kitchen drawer.

     Many of these spoons have a story or memory attached to them. For instance, there is the olive wood implement my husband bought and has asked me not to leave soaking in the dishwater as it will sully its character; the other spoons do not seem offended in the least by this preferential treatment. And there are two, small, bone-handled spoons which have immigrated from Africa and are perfect for tasting the sauce or soup. There is even an interloper hiding among the handles which isn't a spoon at all; it is the beautifully grained cheese spreader I bought from a weekend craft market in a church courtyard in London. I rarely use it because I am afraid it will lose its tree smell. You would understand my reluctance, perhaps, if I told you that I go all goofy in lumber yards and stroll around sniffing planks like a cat with catnip.

     There are others as well, but the one I hold most dear is the porridge spoon. It really isn't a spoon, more of a spatula or stick. It was my father's and the only utensil he would use to stir his morning porridge. When I visited my parents and made breakfast for them, I would search their crowded kitchen crock for it to make their oatmeal. When I knew my parents were dying, I asked if I could have it. It is now our designated porridge stick and woe to the one who gets caught stirring garlic or onions with it.

     I found a fading date scratched into its handle: 1949. I know, without being told, it is my father's writing. I never had the chance to ask him what it meant, but I suspect it is the year he bought it. He died four years ago, but today is his birthday. He would have been 90. It seemed fitting, therefore, to mark the day with a remembrance of something we have shared.

Elephant Ride

     The elephant shuffled its wide, flat feet, snorting clouds of dust in the bare enclosure. There was nothing between me and the mountainous gray bulk, but its keeper—nothing to make a timid young girl feel safe from the wild impulses of the jungle creature. Tiny brown eyes, sunk in whorls of flesh as rough and seamed as tree bark, peered calmly out at me from a massive head, but the long, questing nose and ropey tail were restless. This elephant didn’t look nearly as civilized as King Babar did in my picture books, and I couldn’t imagine him wearing either a suit or a hat.

     I was anxious for what was to come, but a bubble of excitement kept me from turning around and running back to cling to my grandmother’s leg. My younger sister and I were going to ride the elephant, and instinctively, I felt it was the kind of thing I might never have the chance to do again.

     I had been envious when my older brother and sister had ridden the train to Seattle to spend a weekend with my grandmother; envious of the small cardboard suitcases they clutched in their hands; of the attention the conductor gave them as he helped them to board; of their smiling faces and exuberant hand-wavings at the window as the train pulled away from the station. All of that was gone now, eclipsed by an elephant.  

     It was the first adventure I remember having—something so out of the ordinary I would remember it for the rest of my life. Even though the elephant I rode was a tamed zoo animal, in my imagination it was a wild beast fresh from the jungles of Borneo; the kind I had seen in a book, hoisting logs with its trunk like a forklift.

     Years later, as I read about the treatment many such animals in captivity received at the hands of their trainers, I felt pangs of sympathy and regret, hoping my elephant had been spared; but the burden of knowledge did not rob me of the magic of memory. The joy of riding an elephant was wrapped in the innocence of childhood, and was the first of many windows that would open to show me that the world is a wondrous place.

Robert Bateman, artist

Smitten With Smeg

     I have a curious relationship with some of my small electrical appliances. I am as thankful for my food processor, blender and mixer as I am for my dentist or the teller who handles my house payment at the bank. They each provide a service that makes life easier, but one does tend to take them for granted.

     Not so the toaster and tea kettle. Those two appliances are like family. My fondness for tea and toast is so ardent that I have written poetry about them. There is no poetry forthcoming for their progenitors, but they are surely deserving of a blog post.

     When my friendly little red toaster stopped working properly a few years ago, my husband talked me into buying a brushed stainless usurper that glares at me from the kitchen counter like a one-eyed cyborg. It is a little disconcerting to wake up to a cyborg each morning, so when I decided to buy an electric tea kettle instead of heating water on the stove in my cheerful green Le Creuset, it was necessary to find a friendly one.

     I found Smeg.

     Six weeks later, it feels as if Smeg and I have known each other for years. Best of all, I think one of my tea cozies is smitten.